Buffalo Grill on Le Burger Trip

Arriving at a self catering holiday destination late on a Saturday night has one problem. Come Sunday, you have a brief window to buy your groceries in a neighbourhood you’re not yet familiar with.

The whole wild goose chase which was that Sunday morning need not be repeated in full here. Suffice to say, by the end of nearly three hours, my father hadn’t been to church, we didn’t have any groceries, something MASSIVE had been going on down the town but we didn’t know what and we were overly familiar with the local industrial estate.

Buffalo Grill, with its pseudo American red and white hoardings is a familiar site from dual carriage ways and motorways across France.

It’s somewhere we’d been curious about. Was it cheap? Was it tacky? Was it one of these much mooted French roadside restaurants where the food is low price and high quality? As we wouldn’t normallly stray onto out of town industrial estates and retail parks, we’d not previously found ourselves in the vicinity of one when it was meal time.

From the outset we were impressed. Everyone at the table was served with an hors d’oeuvres salad and a basket of warm bread wrapped in a cloth napkin.

It’s moments like this I’m reminded of Samuel L Jackson’s speech about McDonalds in Pulp Fiction. “It’s the little things…”

My husband and I each ordered the promotional set menu “Le Burger Trip” comprising choice of bacon burger or bavette (steak) with a dessert and drink.

I’ll cut to the chase. After the morning we’d had, I was in serious need of a burger. Now this might look fairly bog standard and McDonalds like but it was a great burger with chunky meat and a bun of substance rather than fresh air. The fries, I’ll admit were not the best but respectable. We were even offered fries refills. (I declined).

Ted had a kids’ portion of cheese burger with chips. We had a worrying accident with some ketchup but I think we got away with it. My father had the only fish dish on the menu – salmon with rice and vegetables.

Buffalo Grill has a similar American, identikit buildings feel to Frankie and Benny’s in the UK however the menu is more similar to Byron Burger. Prices were a reasonable £12 per head for 2 courses plus the salad appetiser. I even begged my husband for us to go back later in the week when the range of local restaurants proved disappointing (he refused saying we were in France and couldn’t go out for burgers twice).

And as if this wasn’t enough, they have a play area. We hoped Ted would pick up some French however with his bossiness, it’s more likely the French kids picked up some English.

Buffalo Grill was clean and smart with attentive staff. It’s wall to wall burgers and steaks but if you’re ok with that you’ll enjoy.

Buffalo Grill – branches peppered nationwide across France. Sadly they’ve yet to launch in the UK although there are a handful of branches in Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Corsica.

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Comments

as you know, i’ve just returned from a road trip in California and they do ‘roadside’ food like it’s gourmet… so it’s nice to see other countries doing a great job too… we just need to get our act together here (although a recent unavoidable trip to a local Little Chef was surprisingly good!)

It’s funny, the French don’t generally do international cuisine that well. I’ve never had a decent pizza in France and their pasta dishes are very ordinary. But I think they’ve got the hang of burgers here – the proper cloth napkins, warm bread rolls and salad made this meal feel very civilised!

Re Little Chef – didn’t they have some help from Heston to up their game?

We haven’t been to a Buffalo Grill although the kids stared longingly at one last summer as we headed back from our Normandy roadtrip. I do remember that when I lived in france (too many years ago to recount here now) le Quick was far superior to le Macdo. I can just imagine what your SUnday morning must have been like on that holiday – glad it’s not just us!

Interesting…there’s a buffalo grill in the nearest big town to us and we’ve often driven past on the way to the hypermarket. I’ve always had very low expectations so have steered well clear but maybe I should give it a go!

I think it’s way better than a Macdonalds or Burger King anyway, like I say, it has more in common with Frankie & Bennies or Byron. I just can’t get over the warm bread rolls and cloth napkins! You would only get those in a really expensive place in the UK wouldn’t you?

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